My photos are uploading to icloud extremely slowly and I can't access my photos in itunes. Is there a way to speed it up. It's not a broadband issue.

My images are all happily on iPhoto, they were on the phone before but now I can't get them on the phone. The timing makes it look like the two are connected.

iPhoto? Is this a typo? If you want to upload your photos to iCloud Photo Library, you need the Photos.app, not iPhoto.

Check in Phots for Mac the status of the upload. If there are photos, that cannot be uploaded to iCloud Photo Library, you will find them in a smart album with the smart rule "Photo is unable to upload to iCloud Photo Library".

See: Check the status of your library in Photos for macOS - Apple Support

The third part ("Unable to Upload 2 Items") appears if there are any photos or videos on your Mac that couldn't be uploaded to iCloud Photo Library. You might be able to fix this with steps below. Note that any edits and keywords you've applied to these photos will be lost during this process:

1. Create a new Smart Album by choosing File > New Smart Album.
2. Name the Smart Album "Unable to Upload" and set the three pop-up menus to Photo - is - unable to upload to iCloud Photo Library.
3. Select "Unable to Upload" in the left sidebar. If the sidebar isn't visible, choose View > Show Sidebar.
4. Press Command-A to select all the photos in the Smart Album, and then choose File > Export > Export Unmodified Original For (#) Photos.
5. In the dialogs that follow, choose the file name format and location for the exported photos.
6. After the photos export, make sure the photos are all still selected in the Smart Album. Then right-click or Control-click one of them, and choose Delete (#) Photos from the contextual menu.
7. Import the photos back into your library by choosing File > Import and finding the images in the location you chose in step 5.

After you finish these steps, the library status display will show the progress of uploading these newly imported photos to iCloud Photo Library.

Do you think the problem is between iCloud and iTunes?

Which iCloud service are you using for Photos?

You can use My Photos Stream to upload new photos to iCloud and sync to other devices, then iTunes Photo sync should still work for you like before.

But if you enable iCloud Photo Library on the iPhone, syncing photos with iTunes will be disabled.

You're welcome, Sam! 🙂